Apple's launch of the iPhone 5 in September came with a bunch of new commercials to promote the device.

But Apple didn't shout quite so loud about an enhancement to its new mobile operating system, iOS 6, which also occurred in September: The company has started tracking users so that advertisers can target them again, through a new tracking technology called IFA or IDFA.

Previously, Apple had all but disabled tracking of iPhone users by advertisers when it stopped app developers from utilizing Apple mobile device data via UDID, the unique, permanent, non-deletable serial number that previously identified every Apple device.

For the last few months, iPhone users have enjoyed an unusual environment in which advertisers have been largely unable to track and target them in any meaningful way.

In iOS 6, however, tracking is most definitely back on, and it's more effective than ever, multiple mobile advertising executives familiar with IFA tell us. (Note that Apple doesn't mention IFA in its iOS 6 launch page).

Users can switch off that targeting, but it's tricky, as we discovered a couple of days ago. Although at least iOS 6 users are able to turn off tracking, which they weren't before.

More at the article there, as per usual.

Anyways, a bit of an interesting twist of events there for privacy for Apple iDevice users.

"The tracking control is titled "Limit Ad Tracking," and must be turned to ON, not OFF, in order to work. That's slightly confusing — "ON" means ads are off! — so a large number of people will likely get this wrong."

I wouldn't have found this, and I follow this stuff. I just switched it off now.

"The tracking control is titled "Limit Ad Tracking," and must be turned to ON, not OFF, in order to work. That's slightly confusing — "ON" means ads are off! — so a large number of people will likely get this wrong."

I wouldn't have found this, and I follow this stuff. I just switched it off now.